Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Who Funds ISIS?

13 comments:

A Syrian guide-turned-militant-fighter has said 600 French foreign fighters are with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and that he had witnessed at least two French and two British foreign fighters ordered to return to their countries of origin to carry out attacks, according to a report in the Cumhuriyet daily.

İlhan Tanır, the Washington correspondent for the online news portal Haberdar.com, wrote in an article published by Cumhuriyet on Tuesday that a Syrian guide he had met while traveling in Syria in 2012 named Said had told him that a number of ISIL terrorists were being sent back to the European countries they came from to carry out terrorist attacks.

According to Said, who is only known by his first name, the largest group of foreign fighters in ISIL is made up of Turks, followed by the French. Said told Tanır there are over 600 French citizens in ISIL at the moment and that they are spread around the towns near Aleppo in northern Syria. He added that many of the French foreign fighters were of African descent.

ISIL, a terrorist group that controls large swathes of land in both Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for Friday’s attacks at a stadium, a concert hall and Paris restaurants that left 129 dead and over 350 wounded, with least 99 of them in critical condition.

Stating that he got in touch with Said after the Paris attacks, Tanır wrote that the former guide for journalists wanting to enter Syria told him that “ISIL's aim was always these types of attacks. No doubt the attention it [ISIL] receives will increase, as will its desirability. More people in Europe will want to be ISIL’s soldiers.”

Said, according to Tanır, was a guide-turned squad leader for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which has been locked in a four-and-a-half-year battle against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, a struggle that has cost the lives of over 250,000 people. Tanır states Said later joined ISIL, a terrorist extremist group controlling great swathes of land in Iraq and Syria that is known for its brutal methods of torture and execution.

Said also told Tanır that at one time ISIL terrorists entered and exited Turkey as they pleased. “The Turkish government was not stopping foreign fighters, especially those from Europe. What more could ISIL want from Turkey?”

Turkey has recently come under pressure from Western allies to ramp up its fight against ISIL and tighten control of its porous 900-kilometer-long border with Syria that ISIL has used to obtain supplies and fighters.

But, in turn, Turkey has long complained about a lack of robust intelligence sharing and urged the West to provide more information about potential suspects before they travel. A senior Turkish official said Ankara had twice notified France about one of the Paris attackers but had only received a request for more information after the attacks.

The former ISIL squad leader told Tanır that after border controls got tighter in Turkey, ISIL commanders changed tactics and told the ISIL members who had returned to Europe to carry out attacks “wherever they were," adding that video footage of foreign fighters allegedly burning their European passports is only for show.

Is the Obama administration aware that it is trusting and dealing with a country that has just broken the world record in executions? Of course the President is aware of that, and it seems that he has decided to turn a blind eye to Iran’s increasing aggression and oppression inside and outside of its own country.

According to the recent and fifth report by the special United Nations investigator of human rights, human rights violations in Iran are rising even since the nuclear agreement was reached. Accordingly, execution rates have been increasing at “an exponential rate” in Iran. In 2014, 753 were executed and at least 694 people (including women and juveniles) were executed from January 2015 till mid-September. This is reported to be the highest rate of execution the Islamic Republic has had in 25 years.

If we take the ratio of the population into consideration, the Islamic Republic breaks the world record in number of executions per capita. As Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, pointed out, “The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to execute more individuals per capita than any other country in the world. Executions have been rising at an exponential rate since 2005 and peaked in 2014, at a shocking 753 executions[.]” According to the UN analyst, Iran is on track to execute more than 1000 people by the end of this year. Of course, these are only the official numbers being reported by the Iranian regime, the unreported number of executions by the government is likely much higher........................

The generals who won World War II would start by leveling Raqqa, the ISIS caliphate’s capital. Civilians would die, but those remaining in Raqqa have embraced ISIS, as Germans did Hitler. The jihadis must be crushed. Start with their “Berlin.”

Kill ten thousand, save a million.Ralph Peters

Obama’s ‘patience’ merely gave ISIS time to growRalph Petershttp://nypost.com/2015/11/16/obamas-patience-merely-gave-isis-time-to-grow/

MANILA, Philippines -- In a press conference in Manila on Wednesday President Obama blasted Republicans’ recent calls to block Syrian refugees’ entrance into the United States, saying, “I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric coming out of here in the course of this debate.”

Obama's sharp words, delivered during his stop at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit here, underscored the enormous chasm between the president's approach to upheaval in the Mideast and those of Republicans, some of whom are seeking their party's presidential nomination next year. The president has pledged to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year, but the fact that a Syrian passport was recovered from one of the assailants killed Friday during the terrorist strikes in Paris has prompted many GOP politicians to call for a halt to any such plan.

Dozens of GOP governors have said this week they will not accept Syrian refugees into their states.

PARIS (AP) — French police are hunting for a second fugitive directly involved in the deadly Paris attacks, officials said Tuesday after France made an unprecedented demand that its European Union allies support its military action against the Islamic State group.

Surveillance video obtained by The Associated Press indicates a team of three attackers carried out the shootings at a Paris sidewalk cafe, leading police to believe that a second assailant is on the loose.

Officials previously had not specified how many people were involved in the attack on the sidewalk bar on La Fontaine au Roi street.

Three French officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the investigation, confirmed that an analysis of the series of attacks on Friday indicated that one additional person directly involved in the assault remains unaccounted for.

In Germany, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin that a Syrian passport found with one of the Paris attackers with the name Ahmad al Mohammad may have been a false flag intended to make Europeans fearful of refugees. The passport showed registrations in Greece, Serbia and Croatia, which he described as "unusual."

He said the multiple registrations by a person using the passport were "evidence that this was a trail that was intentionally laid, but it can't be ruled out at the moment that this was an IS terrorist who came to France ... via Germany as a refugee.”

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the man carrying the passport may have traveled with a companion from Turkey to Europe.

The disclosure of a second possible fugitive came on the same day that France launched new airstrikes on the militants' stronghold in Syria; as Vladimir Putin ordered a Russian military cruiser to cooperate with French on fighting IS in Syria and as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hinted at a possible upcoming cease-fire in Syria that would let nations focus on fighting IS.

French and Belgian police were already looking for key suspect Salah Abdeslam, 26, whose suicide-bomber brother Brahim died in the attacks Friday night that killed at least 129 people and left over 350 wounded in Paris. Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for the carnage.

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism

George W. Bush may think that a war against Iraq is the solution to our problems, but the reality is, it will only serve to create far more.

This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher. It will not end the threat of weapons of mass destruction; it will make possible their further proliferation. And it will not lay the groundwork for the flourishing of democracy throughout the Mideast; it will harden the resolve of Arab states to drive out all Western (i.e. U.S.) influence.

If you thought Osama bin Laden was bad, just wait until the countless children who become orphaned by U.S. bombs in the coming weeks are all grown up. Do you think they will forget what country dropped the bombs that killed their parents? In 10 or 15 years, we will look back fondly on the days when there were only a few thousand Middle Easterners dedicated to destroying the U.S. and willing to die for the fundamentalist cause. From this war, a million bin Ladens will bloom.

And what exactly is our endgame here? Do we really believe that we can install Gen. Tommy Franks as the ruler of Iraq? Is our arrogance and hubris so great that we actually believe that a U.S. provisional military regime will be welcomed with open arms by the Iraqi people? Democracy cannot possibly thrive under coercion. To take over a country and impose one's own system of government without regard for the people of that country is the very antithesis of democracy. And it is doomed to fail.

A war against Iraq is not only morally wrong, it will be an unmitigated disaster.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.